


The Sky, The Stars, and You and Me

by fallendarlings



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Gen, Grieving, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), no happy ending, steve never comes back, working title was literally im an emo THOT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 19:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallendarlings/pseuds/fallendarlings
Summary: It's 2023 and Steve is gone to return the stones. But he doesn't come back.Bucky sits on the bench by the lake and waits.





	The Sky, The Stars, and You and Me

**Author's Note:**

> this is dedicated to renee on twitter @classicbucky thank u for the prompt ily

After five seconds pass he accepts it. 

After five minutes, Banner is packing up and Sam is panicking and Bucky walks over to the bench by the water. 

He sits down hard, feeling every single one of his years heavy in his bones, at home with the cold that never leaves. The wind rustles the leaves on the trees, blows his hair across his face. He spent years shoving out the presence of the Winter Soldier in his mind, locking him up and throwing away the key that he might never revert to that mindset. His breath hitches. And he opens the cage and lets the Soldier in. Steve is gone. He left. But. 

The cold never leaves. 

The Soldier never leaves. 

They wrap around him like the arms of his almost lover; they pull him in and whisper _we are with you and we will always be with you_. All he has to do is give himself up to them. And what is there to hold him back now? After all, there’s not a damn person left in the world who knew _him_. Nobody knows him as Bucky first anymore. 

It’s a relief to give up, to give over. To not feel. 

He sits on the bench by the water with his knees drawn to his chest for a long, long time. The sun is setting and it’s getting cold now and yesterday he might have hated the cool air against his skin but today it’s his friend. He’s cold deep in his bones, deep in his chest, deep in his heart. Tiny ice tendrils curling through shredded aortas that no longer know how to pump, how to live without Steve, without the lifeline he had given Bucky when he was drowning in memory loss. Steve, who was the only reason he didn’t put a bullet in his mouth in Bucharest. Knowing that even though it wasn’t safe to be around him, there was someone out there that _loved_ him. That thought he was worth it even when the rest of the world would have let him die with pleasure in atonement for his crimes. 

Sam sits next to him. His voice is shredded when he speaks, like maybe he spent the afternoon crying. “He’s really gone.” 

“Yes.” 

“You knew he was going.” 

“Yes.” 

“Does he ever plan on coming back?” 

Bucky closes his eyes and breathes in through his nose. There had been a hushed conversation the night before. A conversation that turned angry and tearful and revealed all the secrets they had ever kept from each other without them really having to say anything at all. They had been walking a tightrope since 1923 and there were only two options. Get to the other end, together, or fall off. 

Bucky is still falling. 

Poetic irony. 

“He told me that he would come back when his life with her was over. He told me it would only be seconds. If he was coming back he would have been here already. Only death could have kept him away.” His voice is a stranger to his own ears, the Soldier speaking in blunt sentences. 

Mission Report. 

Mission Report, _now_.

Sam tucks his head, chin against his chest, and the moonlight glints off the tear tracks on his cheeks. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Not to Steve. Not to Nat. They’re just. Gone.” 

Two targets, level 6. 

Mission: Success. 

The Black Widow, dead over the side of a cliff. 

The Captain, in the ground next to his love somewhere in another reality. 

Bucky could scream and cry and rage and it wouldn’t change a thing. He could let himself give in to the unfeeling Soldier trying to crowd into his body, take away his autonomy again and it wouldn’t change a thing. He wants to be something that can change. He wants to not hurt but he wants to be able to give something to the world and to share his pain and to live and die and be happy and angry and everything in between. 

He turns on the bench and wraps his arms around Sam. One hand rubbing up and down his spine and he’s _done_ this before. Given comfort. A tiny tenement in Brooklyn and a thin boy on the cusp of manhood sobbing in his arms, clutching his mother’s threadbare Sunday best dress to his chest to smell her one last time. 

A bench next to a lake under the autumn moonlight and a man who just lost his best friends sobbing in his arms. The taste of salt on his lips from his own tears when he darts his tongue out to lick them. 

“Someone is going to have to take up the Captain America mantle,” Bucky chokes out against Sam’s shoulder. 

“It should be you. He would have wanted it to be you.” 

“He wanted it to be _you_. He told me he was going to bring the shield back for you.” 

Bucky is done fighting anyway. It’s been almost a century since he was drafted, forced into a war he never wanted a part of and they haven’t let him rest yet. He’s done. He’s going to find a place alone somewhere to grow old and die and maybe in the afterlife he’ll find Steve again. They were destined for it, their souls too intertwined for anything else, pulled away from each other like the tide from the shore but always _always_ coming back together in the end. Death couldn’t keep them apart and if it tried… well, maybe Bucky would have one last war to fight and win. 

“Goddamn it.” Sam pulls back, dragging the back of his hand over his cheeks. “Goddamn you, Steve Rogers, you goddamn bastard. If your ghost is listening to this right now I hope you know I’m gonna kick your ass the moment I see you on the other side.” 

“I always said he liked getting punched.” Bucky wipes the tears off his face and looks back at the water. There’s a ripple in the silvery water, a fish coming up for air maybe. “He knows.” 

They walk back up to the house together and pretend not to notice that they’re both still crying. Sam unlocks a silver car and gets in the driver’s side and when Bucky turns to walk away he calls him back and tells him to get in the goddamn car. They end up at a 24 hour diner sharing an all you can eat basket of greasy fries (they can eat a lot) and drinking too much pop. Sam asks if he still wants to see the Grand Canyon like Steve always said he did. 

They take a road trip and it’s _awful_ the way they bicker and fight but Sam takes a picture of Bucky standing with his arms thrown wide next to the massive canyon and they stay in shitty motels and at two am on the fifteenth day Sam decides they should buy a star for Steve because that’s a thing you can do now. They don’t buy a grave, there’s far too many of those already in the world now, tombstones without bodies under them. It’s much more what Steve would have wanted, that Bucky can lay down at night and look up at the sky and the stars and know his spirit is out there somewhere. And the cold thaws a little each night, each time Bucky takes a breath and tells the stars that he forgives Steve. 

Eventually it might even be true.


End file.
